Sleep Deprivation Essay

There are a few factors that are essential for life such as breathing or eating, but one of the most essential factor is sleep. Even though the amount of sleep people need differs from one individual to another, the fact is that eventually everyone needs to sleep. People know the importance of sleep, but due to the increased workload and the pressure of society people are getting less sleep. As a result, there has been an increase interest on the effects lack of sleep has on the mind especially the memory of a person. Many questions arose about the relationship between sleep and memory due to the fact most high school and college students have become sleep deprived. For example, does more sleep mean higher grades?

This essay focuses on evaluating three functions of sleep. These functions include mental health (Jackowska et al, 2011), cardiovascular disease (Kronholm et al, 2011) and memory (Hu et al, 2006). The key aspects are explained in detail with regards to studies. The findings from the studies will help justify the function and it’s involvement with sleep. Sleep is important for an individual’s well being, survival, brain development, emotional regulation, cognitive function, memory, and in order to protect mental and cardiovascular health. An individual should sleep for 6-8 hours. A recent suggestion by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommended that an individual should sleep for minimum 7 hours. The quality of sleep is significant to maintain healthy brain functions. Evidence, indicating that good sleep quality is essential for mood and health then duration (Chandola et al, 2010). The researches implied will enable the understanding of the functions of sleep and evaluate the evidence of each of the functions, including advantages and limitations. Furthermore ethical issues are discussed, and an overall summary of the essay is briefed.

The brain has to perform calculations on a day to day basis, and not giving it rest causes to accumulate stress. Besides processing calculations in order to carry out daily tasks, the brain also perceives enormous amounts of information, and needs down time to organize all the information. Usually the consolidating of all the information takes place when a person is sleeping, therefore depriving the brain of sleep will cause incognizant brain function and leave one groggy throughout the next day (Sample, 1). Distinct implications of decrease in brain function is displayed when a person experiences drowsiness throughout the day, which causes truncated memory retention rates and loss of

Sleep is essential for optimal human function. In fact, a lack of sleep can actually affect important cognitive functions, like memory. A 2007 study added to the already substantial evidence that even acute total sleep deprivation impairs attentiveness, working memory, and reaction time in various tasks (Alhola, Polo-Kantola). One such way to further this investigation of the effects of sleep deprivation on memory is through the Memory Interference Test, or MIT. MIT is a program designed by Gaston Pfluegl, Ph.D., and Enrique Lopez, Psy. D., at UCLA to test the memory of students. Along with a memory test, the MIT also anonymously collected the physical states, mental states, and demographics of each student test subject, providing a substantial database through which students can test hypotheses, such as the connection between sleep deprivation and memory. Since the MIT requires short-term memory recall, the hours of sleep a student had before taking the test could have a noticeable effect on his or her performance. An unprecedented study this year found that sleep deprivation may actually even induce false memories, which would certainly impact a student taking the MIT because the test requires the subject to recognize images that have been previously presented to them (Frenda, et al). The hypothesis is that students who slept 8 hours before the test will perform better on the MIT than students who only slept 4 hours. The null hypothesis is that students who had adequate

By giving the participants only one test, we don't know if we can generalize the results to other types of questions testing mental performance. Also, because the participants knew that those with higher REM sleep perform better than those with lower REM sleep, they could've acted in a way to meet this criterion. Another limitation was that the experimenter was aware of what assigned group the participants were in. This awareness could lead the experimenter into only recording data that agreed with their hypothesis. In an attempt to address these concerns, the researchers conducted another

As we learned in lecture, sleep is an important component in improving a person’s overall health. Because sleep is vital for cognitive function and available time to spend sleeping is limited for college students, like myself, it is advantageous to change sleeping behaviors to maximize the benefits sleep can provide. After tracking my sleeping schedule for a week, I have noticed some patterns and behavior that may be affecting the quality of sleep I am getting. Based on my sleep journal, I could improve my sleep by cutting back on the amount of caffeine I intake and the time spent on electronics before bed to try to reduce the amount of time needed for me to fall asleep.

Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania was trying to find out how the amount of sleep affects your body mentally. This is important so we know how to take care of ourselves and stay healthy. To test this experiment, the Perelman School of Medicine got a group of 40 adults and put them into two different experimental groups. They were placed in either a group where they stayed up for 28 hours consecutively or in a group where they received a full 8 hours of sleep. Afterwards, all participants took a computer based test. The students studied how the participants reacted to happy, neutral, or sad faces through accuracy and response time. Overall, the studies showed that the participants who stay up for 28 consecutive hours

The research question revolved around whether the amount and extent of workload a student has at their disposal, how would it affect their length and quality of sleep? My hypothesis was that as student’s workload increases, the amount of sleep they receive should decrease in length and quality. Based off the results of the survey, my prediction

In general, our results suggest that it is possible sleep over 9 hours as well as caffeine intake is a predictor of slower reaction times. In each category of individuals with caffeine, we see a slight increase in average PVT times. For example, we see in Figure 6 an average of 320 ms compared to the average in Figure 3, with caffeine consumption, of 312 ms. While each of the three categories of sleep suggest the finding that caffeine consumption decreased reaction times on average, the statistical analysis presented argues that the significance is not strong and can be seen in the recorded p values. Each of the obtained p values are above 0.05 and this means that based on our data the differences aren’t distinct enough. Looking at the

A decrease in sleep on college students can cause poor class performance. A full-time student constantly has a hectic schedule while attending class and writing notes from a lesson. In recent studies on undergraduates, researchers noticed that, “Among college students who carried a full academic load, those who reported poorer sleep quality were likely to perform worse on academic tests” (Gaultney, 2010, p.91). As a result, in the decrease of sleep in college students are not achieving their desirable goals in their curriculum. A drop of sleep hours, never help to pass an exam in college

Although acquiring the basic amount of sleep seems to be an easy task, college students are struggling to snag even a couple hours of sleep, thus significantly affecting their four domains of development during a crucial developmental period in their lives. College students are going through the development period, Emerging Adulthood, which is from the ages of 18 to 25 years old. During this period of time, adolescents tend to focus on their self-development and discover their identity and the four developmental domains are evolving (Grusec & Hastings, 2008). The four domains are: Cognitive, Social, Emotional, and Physical. These domains are significantly affected by sleep deprivation, which is the condition of not having the right amount of sleep. Students are unable to focus on their academics, are unable to socialize, cannot handle their emotions, and their health begins to deteriorate. Sleep deprivation is becoming a major problem in the country and is affecting college students, who are going through an essential time in their lives for which they need to be in their shape. Throughout the nation, 70 million Americans are noted to have difficulties sleeping because of sleep disorders, which is roughly 23 percent of the national population (Gaultney, 2010). With sleep deprivation on the rise for students in universities, many adolescents’ four developmental domains are not developing properly. This paper will address the ways through which sleep deprivation is

The second study by Polzella, (1975) focused on the effects of sleep deprivation on memory. The author hypothesized that sleep deprivation increases the occurrence of lapses which prevents the encoding of items in memory. The method that was used to collect information was by having five males (one author and four participants), all their ages ranged from 21-32. Their sleeping habits for bed usually ranged from 10:30 pm- 12:00 pm and they would wake up typically at 6:00 am-8:00 am. The experiment was done individually where the participant sat in a small room with two fans and was presented visually on a cathode-ray tube run by a computer. Researchers conducted the experiment twice, the first time as a normal session and then as a sleep-deprived

Sleep repairs the physical body to improve and maintain general health, consolidate learning and memory, and recharge the psychological batteries to maintain emotional balance and well-being (Ohlmann & O'Sullivan, 2009). Without proper sleep, students are most likely to make mistakes, forget often, feeling “uptight” and overall sick. College students will be unable to function in the day or possibly too sick to attend to classes. This behavior can lead to the student unable to perform as well in class but also impact their grades drastically.

Sleep has been a widely controversial topic discussed in the study of learning and memory. The lack of sleep has been thought to disrupt learning and negatively affect memory. The association between memory and sleep is still being studied and many have supported

The extent of performance impairment caused by sleep loss appears to be profound for some individuals but moderate for others (Wilkinson, 1961). If these individual differences are substantial, they constitute a trait, and this trait can be predicted, performance impairment due to sleep loss may well be managed through identifying and providing proactive interventions to high-risk (i.e., more vulnerable or less resistant) individuals. In fact, several lines of research have been conducted to investigate individual differences in the performance impact of sleep loss.